Pupil absence is one of the main challenges facing schools and policymakers, as millions of children every year miss classes. This results in lost learning and limited life opportunities, as well as making young people vulnerable to criminality and gangs.
Research into school attendance in the past five years has referred to 鈥済host children鈥 and a 鈥渓ost generation鈥, with blame often attached to feckless parenting, as schools struggle in the post-pandemic landscape to get children back into class.
The suddenness of school closures, even when set in the context of a public health emergency, inadvertently sent out a message that perhaps school wasn鈥檛 that important after all.
The for England show that, in the academic year to date, the overall absence rate is 6.7 per cent, of which 2.1 per cent is unauthorised. The persistent absence rate 鈥 pupils who miss 10 per cent or more of their possible sessions – is 18.8 per cent.
Scotland has some of the highest rates for pupil absence, with recently describing its own data as 鈥渟taggering鈥.
In Wales, what they were before the pandemic.
The crisis around absenteeism is complex and arises from a combination of factors, which include government policies and personal experience.
Here, we examine some of the reasons behind what has been termed the school attendance crisis.
Term time holidays and pupil absence
Unauthorised absence in the form of term time holidays is said to be a major cause of school absenteeism, and absorbs much of the national debate around attendance, particularly in the media. Families may decide to risk fines for taking their children out of school because flights and hotels are cheaper off-season than during designated holidays.
However, during a recent attendance conference organised by the Department for Education, Catherine McKinnell, the minister for school standards, said term-time holidays represented 鈥渁 very small percentage of the attendance problem鈥, with the government now preferring to focus on those missing 鈥渟ignificant amounts of school on a very regular basis鈥.
McKinnell told that although it was a 鈥渟ignificant issue 鈥 it鈥檚 a very small percentage of the attendance problem鈥.
SEND
The post-Covid landscape has exacerbated problems that were already mounting for Sencos and school SEND departments.
Thousands of children with SEND have no school place or are being kept off school because their needs cannot be catered for. A shortage of specialist teachers and educational psychologists, limited resources and budgetary constraints all explain why many young people with SEND are receiving little or no education.
It is estimated that up a quarter of all cases referred to Local Government and Social Care Ombudsmen are related to SEND provision, including delayed EHCP assessments, inadequate support provision, and failures to properly implement SEND plans.
A , published in January, recommended that persistent school absentees should be assessed for SEND.
School anxiety and mental health problems
Another effect of the school shutdowns of 2020-21 is an increase in school anxiety and mental health problems in children and adolescents, many of whom found the experience frightening, lonely and traumatic. Girls and neurodiverse children have been found in studies to be most at risk of mental health problems as a result of the pandemic.
Typically, school anxiety 鈥 also known as school phobia or school refusal 鈥 happens because children and young people are fearful of bullying or not being able to make friends, have difficult relationships with teachers or find the school environment stressful or institutionalising. This can often be due to an undiagnosed special need such as autism, ADHD or a learning difficulty, such as dyslexia.
Young carers and pupil absence
It is unclear exactly how many young people in the UK regularly care for sick family members, but estimates vary from 39,000 in the school census of 2023 to 120,000 aged five to 18 years in an ONS survey in England in 2021. A BBC survey in 2018 found the number could be as many as 820,000, aged 11-15.
According to a , young carers miss an average of 23 days of school every year, and almost half of those in secondary schools are 鈥減ersistently absent鈥. When asked in a survey about how much support is given to children and adolescents who are carers, almost a quarter of teachers said their school provided none at all.
Home education and the advent of virtual schools
A distinction needs to be made between home education and a virtual education. Parents can legally home-educate their children and do not have to follow the national curriculum, and some may choose to do this using a virtual school. The past five years have seen a proliferation of these schools in the aftermath of the pandemic, when some families noticed learning from home suited their children and family dynamic.
Why, if pupils are enrolled, should virtual schools be considered in the context of school attendance?
The reason is that while the Department for Education may accredit 鈥 and Ofsted, inspect – virtual schools, ministers have so far shown little interest in engaging with them as an alternative to traditional schooling and tackling the challenges around attendance. According to , children who are educated partly in a traditional and partly in a virtual school 鈥 known as hybrid education – are deemed absent when not physically in a school setting 鈥 somewhat blurring the definition of what constitutes absenteeism.
